"Now, look," Charity argued, offended. "All right, I made some mistakes, and maybe I'm not a real nice girl anymore, and maybe that ain't much of a loss, but I don't deserve to be sent to a ... a white slave house."

"White slave?" Jake laughed with honest amusement. "Melodramatic wench, the Banal has a variety of jobs, and you'll like Elvira Grubb, the manager. Everyone says what they mean. What they've got to say, that is, and as far as it goes. But as ordered, reality. Reason and order, ponderous sanity, regulations. The very cosmos invalid until reviewed, countersigned and filed in triplicate. Very safe and no surprises. And . . . here we are. Feel at home."

The cab slid to the curb before a neon-fronted building with a crowded bar from which brassy music blared out over the whole sleazy block. A little daunted, Charity didn't want to leave the safety of Jake just yet.

"Thanks again. Every time I need saving, there's you."

"Scared, Charity? It's just like the world, the same confusion. Don't be impressed."

Charity's glance dropped to the age-blackened leather pouch around his scarred neck. "There's something I - don't be mad, but I just gotta ask."

"I know." He tapped the pouch. "They all do."

"You can tell me to mind my own business."

"Perhaps you're not ready for it yet."

She met his gaze levelly. "Hey, Jake, I'm getting readier by the minute, or ain't you noticed? I mean about what I used to think was good and bad."

"Ah - a sea change."

She slid over to touch his cheek, caring about him. "Why, Jake?"

"The same old question. Why did I do it?" He looked past her in that distant, detached way of his. "You know, all those films you saw never got it right. Yeshua was my friend."

"Who's he?"

"Jesus: that's what the Greeks made out of his name. He was my friend, he loved me. Actually Yeshua was one of the two best minds in Judea. I was the other. Freely admitted; my modesty fell with the rest of me. But in those days I was something of a Fundamentalist myself and not at all forgiving. I never forgave him for not being what I wanted him to be . . . a god, a messiah. We needed to believe in miracles then, too; nor were we any more critical than you."

Charity found it difficult to stay on the subject with him that close. "I was taught you were the lowest thing on earth or in hell."

Jake laughed again. "That's leaning on it, don't you think? What I am in fact is the oldest but most effective plot device of the trite world. People need a villain, Charity. Without me, Yeshua would have been a ripple in Roman history. One dissident rabbi leading one splinter group out of dozens, a footnote for Hebrew scholars. People have short memories for also-rans. The way things turned out, I don't imagine he's any happier than I am. I have to go." Jake leaned over and brushed her lips with his. They weren't warm, but Charity felt the sincerity. "The ride's on the house, Miss Stovall."

"Don't you ever get lonely, Jake?"

He took a moment to consider the question. "No, not the way you mean it. Besides, who'd live in that house of mine?" Jake slipped the gear into neutral. "Rotten weather, a snotty embezzler for a watchdog, and I'm not much company."

"Don't put yourself down." Charity opened her door and got out.

"Don't go sticky," Jake snorted. "You'll spoil my theological image."

"Don't worry about that. You'll always be a son of a bitch." Charity slammed the car door and leaned in through the window. "Just kind of a nice one."

"Queen of the Treacle Harvest." Jake gunned the motor. "If you'd been with us, you'd have fallen in love with Yeshua just as Mary did. Women have a weakness for celebrity. Go on, I've got a call."

BARION TO COYUL: SINCE STOVALL NO LONGER.

INTERESTED IN STRIDE, OBJECTIVE SEEMS ACCOMPLISHED. SHOULD EXPEDITE. STRONG REASONS TO TERMINATE.

COYUL TO BARION: WHAT'S ACCOMPLISHED? SHE IS MERELY AFRAID OF HIM. WILL TERMINATE WHEN SHE'S SICK OF HIM. YOU SAID NO QUESTIONS. DON'T BUG ME.

BARION TO COYUL: I SAY QUIT NOW. WHY MAKE A FEDERAL CASE?.

COYUL TO BARION: YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF WOMEN STILL NEOLITHIC. SUBJECT LOOSENED UP BUT NOT YET RESTRUCTURED. PRESENTLY AS LIABLE TO FALL IN LOVE WITH JUDAS AS WOODY BARNES OR ANYONE ELSE. BESIDES, I'M BEGINNING TO LIKE THE LASS.

BARION TO COYUL: PSYCHOBABBLJNG SENTIMENTALIST.

COYUL TO BARION: NEXT TO VIOLENCE I REALLY HATE DIRTY LANGUAGE.

28 - Everyone comes to the Banal

A week without Paladins assured Charity that her trail was cold. She relaxed into the humdrum of the Club Banal, which combined all the functions Jake listed. There was the bar, built in the Tijuana-Juarez style of the late '40s, with rickety tables and a brass ensemble that played interminably. Just off the bar down an atmospherically dim passage were the brothel rooms. Behind this vigorously active function lay BSA (Below Stairs Accounting, office of), a huge open space like five airplane hangars end to end. From the entrance, BSA receded into a dim infinity of desks, workers, the chitter-clatter-ting! of office machines and the asthmatic buzz of government phones obsolete in 1960.

"What do they do here?" Charity asked Elvira Grubb, who conducted her introductory tour.

"I'm not sure, lamb. No one is."

If the function of BSA remained obscure, the people were more than familiar to Charity, like the VA and post office workers at home. They filed into the bar on their breaks to hunch over the tables in disconsolate huddles, bawling at each other over the deafening music. None of them could tell Charity Stovall what BSA ultimately produced, being employed strictly on a need-to-know basis. They needed to know very little and were not at all curious about the end product. They processed mountains of paperwork, all requiring triplication and interoffice memos, listless, disinterested and permanently dissatisfied. Since time meant nothing, the smallest mistake in the endless lists of numbers and names jarred the Leviathan process off its treadmill track. Back came whole Himalayas of completed lists for checking, recopying, rechecking, review and countersigning once again. Conversations in the bar centered obsessively on who made the most mistakes, who was getting kicked upstairs or who was next in line for promotion. They endured a grinding, low-grade misery but no one ever left except to visit the girls.

"They could leave anytime," Elvira told her, "but no one ever does."

The whole thing seemed pointless to Charity. "Gol-lee, why would the Devil make up such a wimpy kind of punishment?"

"Bless you, child, the Prince doesn't punish anyone any more than / do. They brought all this with them." Elvira Grubb had a comfortable, sensual laugh and the relaxed plumpness of a woman come to middle years by an enjoyable road. Her life, she felt, had been marvelous and death was even better. "I take care of things and water the drinks and - if I do say so - give the establishment what decorum it possesses. My husband is an eminent critic and friend to the Prince. Did I tell you that Mrs. Lincoln was a confidante of mine?" Elvira had, more than once. "She didn't deserve her bad reputation in Washington society. Let me tell you, that husband of hers was not an easy man to live with. You watch out for these humanitarians. Someone close wants a little affection, they're always off loving Mankind. Now, Wilmer is a perfect husband. A real bear cat."

And off she'd go, telling once more of her romantic marriage while Charity tried to enjoy her diet cola and found she could no longer stomach anything so insipid.

"Give me a bourbon straight up, please?" said the suddenly needful Charity. "This stuff tastes like these people look."

True, gray and unhappy as they were, no one left the club or the accounting office. They hung over the tables or the bar, complaining about the petty but endless injustices of civil service or what hell should really be, but no one really tried to change anything.

"Why should they when it's all so nice and steady and safe?" Elvira philosophized from her high desk between the bar and the annexed house of qualified joy. "Babies always rattle their cribs, but they wouldn't be comfy anywhere else, I say. The girls are fantasy . . . Good evening, Mr. Pugh! Nice to see our regulars, go right up. Domination on the second floor, same as always . . . Where was I?"

"The girls are sad as the office." Charity swirled the swizzle stick in her bourbon. "And those old ladies up in Accounting. Work, work, work, and once a week, big deal, they put on an awful hat with fake flowers, and go across the street where there's girl waitresses and fancy cocktail napkins and get blind. They sweep 'em out in shifts."

This was also true. The retrieval of genteel and very blitzed old ladies from the lounge across the street was a cottage industry in itself.

"Never mind." Elvira stuck to her point. "Whatever they dreamed, this is all they ever really wanted and the office is all they ever got. Used to it. Be scared to death of anything else."

You get what you pay for, Charity knew, which means what you can afford, and you get used to that. Even me, my big night, the first night of my really being a woman, and what do I look back to? The White Rose Motel, which it was probably built by the same people thought up this place.

One worker, mired in the quicksand of Accounting, was still defiant Leon Pebbles was thin, red-eyed and always looked slightly feverish. Leon went an extra mile to do his job well and to search out ways to improve efficiency. Naturally his co-workers hated his guts.

"They don't want efficiency," he grieved to Charity. "They're afraid of it."